Developer: PomPom games
Steam Release: March 2012
Hours Played: 18.0
Similar To: Bullet Candy / Geometry Wars 3 / Scoregasm / Tachyon Project / Waves
Rating: 5/5 Parsnips
If you’re after a quick blast of stress-busting relief, where you step in and out of 30-second explosive levels, then MSR delivers. In short you’re thrown into a tight circular arena and, with very little space for maneuver, challenged to clear it of enemies in less than the said time. The general strategy is to keep as far away from the enemies as possible while usually hugging close to the sides and blasting at them with your laser-gun. Once you hit 20 seconds an ominous ten second warning siren rings out to signal that a nasty and indestructible black twirly alien will arrive at the 30-second mark. To make matters more brutal, an extra one appears every 10 seconds. “Fun” and “nerve-wracking” may be an oxymoron but the words can certainly apply to MSR.
Tally Mode has you playing the game level by level. Choose one out of 89 rooms from one convenient page, make sure you’re ok with one out of eight difficulty settings and away you go. One death ends the level making that 15 seconds delay, to get back into the game, seem VERY long. Adventure mode is a last-as-long-as-you-can romp through continuous levels with no breaks. Again, you set the difficulty from one of eight settings. Balance is helped greatly when you set your difficulty in that it operates using a belt-system. Like a martial arts grading system there are eight different colours to choose from (white to black) with each representing a difficulty. The challenge from room to room rises well but there are occasional spikes where certain rooms, like Number 16 for example, seem overpowered.
The opening lobby has a carousel-like menu to get to what you're after but in a game where most players want to get stuck in, this seems time-consuming. Similarly, selecting a belt in Tally-Mode is designed in a way that has you unnecessarily back-tracking with the need to go back a screen to choose a belt and then returning to the level-select screen to start your game. Displaying and selecting belts on the level-select screen would be faster. Sound is fairly subtle and generally minimalist with a deep tunnel-like ambience. Entering a Tron-inspired neon-lit room triggers that churning but rhythmic, industrial sound which adds a suitable edge to the game's atmosphere. A springy, clicking sound accompanies a failure. Explosions and the deaths of enemies are satisfying especially those that require a number of hits to be dispatched.
With the coloured belts system in place the game effectively gives you 712 (89x8) rooms and in this respect the game is nicely customisable. There is a final score displayed at the end but the real substance of Tally mode lies in completion of levels rather than score. The level-select screen shows progress by displaying all rooms with the highest graded belt used to complete it underneath. The game takes you to this screen every time you finish a room and this is a great, at-a-glance progress system which I really like. Adventure mode is fun but I personally preferred the more satisfying and clear challenge offered in Tally mode. The game stores a global rank for both on clicking the high-score option from the title screen.
Like most twin-stick shooters, this is not a game you'd normally play for long stretches but for a 20-minute blast and particularly with its 30-second-per-room formula in Tally mode, it's a great pick-up-and-play game. It’s also good to know that if you’re after a go-as-far-as-you-can-with-3 lives option, MSR delivers a not-too-shabby version of this as well. Additionally, high-scores are stored in the cloud so an uninstall will not wipe your progress. To my mind, the freedom, convenience and all-round customisability it has, especially with the quick and easy user-friendly difficulty settings, means it has qualities that puts it a cut above your average shooter.
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